


Can't tell if I've been breathing or sleeping or screaming (or waiting for you to come back)

by Cursed_Me



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Chuck Shurley is God, Hinted Castiel/Dean Winchester - Freeform, Hurt Dean Winchester, I Edited This Instead of Sleeping, I'm so sorry, M/M, Season 15, So so sorry, and did you come to stare or wash away the blood?, but fuck him really, bye, castiel death aftermath, i swear to pie, i will sink along with this ship, it's 3:20 am i'm not even kidding, ok enough fucking around in the tags, secret message in the tags:, this is very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25060507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cursed_Me/pseuds/Cursed_Me
Summary: Dean lost Cas. He won the greatest, most important battle ever. He defeated God.And he lost Cas.And it fucking hurts.…I suck at summaries. I know it's cliché to say it, but I really really do. Anyways, if you're looking for something sad to crush that little bit of good vibes that was left in you... you probably found it.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 21





	Can't tell if I've been breathing or sleeping or screaming (or waiting for you to come back)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks, Matt here.  
> so I wrote this thing back when quarantine started and then proceeded to forget it for a couple of months, and now here it is. I hope someone will like it.  
> please, let me know if you find any mistakes and/or have pieces of advice on how to improve my writing, because I'm not a native English speaker and while I am trying my best, I really appreciate any help that could make my best be... better.  
> Well, I'll leave you to this... thing.  
> Hope you enjoy, in the meanwhile, have a good day (or night if it's night).  
> Matt

The wall is cold and rough against my bare back. I can feel the little imperfections, the little spikes of dried paint (dried blood?) poking against my skin.

I’m cold. I’m cold as shit, but I don’t want to get up from here.

I’m honestly not even sure if I can get up: I’ve been sitting here for so long that I don’t know how many hours it’s been. Most likely almost a day, but it feels like forever.

Sam has come to check on me every five minutes since it happened. He never comes in the room, just peaks in from the threshold. He thinks he’s being stealthy, I bet.

He leaves food near the door, sometimes, on the floor, just inside. And water, too. tall glasses filled to the rim. I think he’s brought whiskey, at some point, but I don’t… I don’t really feel like drinking right now. Getting shitfaced doesn’t sound half bad, sure, but what’s the point? I’ll still be here tomorrow morning. The ( _the_ is not the right word. _The_ world will be fine: _my_ is more accurate but I really, really don’t care.) world will still be fucked. What’s the point?

He’s also tried to talk to me, a couple times. Or at least, I think he did: everything after… it’s all very blurry. It’s like someone took my head from my neck and put it in a washing machine for a while, and then screwed it back on: everything is confused, and watered down, and it smells like blood. Wait. I don’t think washing machines are supposed to smell like blood, are they?

I sigh and shift a little. My ass hurts from sitting on the floor for ages. My everything hurts, to be honest. From the deep burns on my chest, to my lungs every single time I try to draw in a deep breath and pull myself back together.

Guess I’ll stay broken, then. Shattered in a thousand little shards of jagged glass scattered on the floor.

Maybe I should stop being a sorry mess and get up and… go on, I guess. Live on, like I always do when everything goes south. But I can’t, I… just can’t.

I just can’t.

I am Dean Winchester. I did things no one else did. I saved the world. Multiple times. Or, at least, I stopped it from ending, multiple times (one could say that there’s a difference. One would be right to say it). I fought ghosts and demons and God knows what other fuckery. I fought _God himself_ , for fucks sake, and I _won._

  1. _Won._



And yet I can’t bring myself to get up from this fucking floor. I can’t get up and wash away the blood from my skin or get the burns patched up or put a goddamn shirt on and fucking eat something. I just _can’t_.

And I am so, _so_ mad that I can’t. Because _come on_ buddy, you’re Dean the fuck Winchester, snap the fuck out of it. You haven’t been raised to be weak, and this is the weakest you’ve ever been: sat on the floor doing nothing but stare at a wall for hours waiting for Cas to come back. You’re pathetic.

Cas isn’t going to come back this time.

Snap out of it, you son of a bitch. Snap out of it.

See? I know this is ridiculous. And yet I can’t move. Even just breathing is a fucking chore. Why can’t I be dead too? And would it be any different? Would it be better? At this point I should know better than to think death can solve anything.

I draw my knees to my chest as I feel another wave of nausea tugging at my stomach. The burns on my chest hurt as hell. I close my eyes, and as soon as I can’t see the wall in front of me anymore, he’s there.

Propped against this same wall, covered in blood, his face beaten to a mostly unrecognizable pulp, his trench coat torn to pieces.

It hurts so much I can’t fucking breathe.

He’s still breathing. Barely. He fights to keep his eyes open: those terrible, stunning, painfully blue eyes.

And he looks at me, and all I manage to do is fall to my knees at his left side, and I want to _do something, do something, take his hand, you stupid fuck_ … But I don’t.

I can’t. I can’t move.

He looks so tired, so done, so in pain, and I can’t stop staring at his bloody mess of a face and at his blue eyes and _Jesus Christ_ I can’t believe this is happening. That I’m… that I’m losing him again.

After all we’ve been through.

After everything we had to endure.

This is the end of the line. But it can’t be. Not yet, please, _not yet_.

I want to _say something_ , _come on, fucking say something,_ but my mouth won’t move. There’s not a single nerve in me I can control.

I feel tears running down my cheeks. I didn’t even know I was crying.

There’s _so much blood_. Fuck. He needs help. He needs a miracle. This can’t be the end I refuse that I will not allow that I have to _do something_ why can’t I just fix it why.

Just. Why.

And he’s still looking at me. He looks like shit, and he’s still beautiful. I would keep him with this disastrous face for the rest of forever if it meant I’d get to keep him.

His eyes are somehow peaceful now, and _hell no,_ you’re not allowed to accept this you have to keep fighting, for heaven’s sake, or I won’t. Please.

Please.

He smiles at me. The faintest, saddest smile I have ever seen.

And then he’s gone.

Someone’s screaming near me. Possibly Sam. Or Jack. Possibly at me. But I can’t make out the words… everything’s spinning, and I feel like I’m going to puke my own guts and -

I force my eyes open. I can’t keep this up. I can’t see it again every time I close my eyes: it’s killing me and it hasn’t even been… I don’t know how long it’s been. It fells like forever ago, or like just a second ago.

It just fucking hurts.

One tear wreastles itself out of my eye. I can feel it rolling down my cheek, to my chin and then I can feel it drop wetly on my knee.

I thought I had run out of water to cry years ago. Hours ago. Something like that.

The wall smells of blood. The fabric of my jeans smells of blood. It’s everywhere.

I’m so used to it, and yet it still makes me nauseous.

I wish it’d go away. I wish there had never been blood to begin with.

I wish I didn’t have to see him every time I blink.

Every fucking time I close my eyes, even just for a split second, he’s there waiting for me.

Most of the times he’s lying in a pool of blood against this wall. But sometimes he’s okay. Sometimes he’s looking at me with his head tilted to the side and he has his tie on backwards and his black hair is all messed up and he looks so young, even tho he’s not supposed to age. His eyes look different. They’re more… clear. Innocent, sky blue instead than a blue that is stormy and broken like the ocean during a hurricane.

Sometimes he’s smiling at me. And I can tell when he thinks I can’t see him because it’s a different kind of smile. When he knows I’m looking at him, he’s like light. When he thinks I’m not it’s less bright, less loud, and a bit sad. A bit more real, maybe.

And it hurts how well I can see him, how well I can see the worried lines on his face and the lighter speckles in his eyes. It hurts that I know exactly how that damn trench coat feels when it’s fisted up in my hands. It hurts like hell that I just know.

_I know. I know I know._

He’s not coming back. I know that. I could sit here and wait for the rest of my life (not gonna be long if I don’t move) and he wouldn’t come back.

Castiel. My guardian angel. My best friend. My… Cas.

He’s… gone. For good this time. I feel it somewhere in my bones: he’s not coming back.

I can’t believe it. I’m serious, wake me up because this has to be a dream. A bad dream. A terrible dream. It has to. Because I… I can’t if it’s not. I just… can’t.

But… it’s not a dream, is it? I have burns on my chest, I don’t remember where my shirt went, and I’m covered in blood (Jesus Mary _so much blood_ ) and _I can’t move_. And it hurts _every-fucking-where_.

And he’s gone _gone_ **_gone_**.

And I don’t remember getting up to move his body, to _burn_ him, but I (we? Sam and Jack probably did most of it) must have done it, because he’s not here.

And I remember the singed marks of his wings on the wallpaper. I could only look at them for half a second, before turning away, and I only saw them through a veil of tears tick enough to blur everything, and I don’t have the guts to turn around and look behind me to see them now, and yet they’re printed so deep in my brains that I’m pretty sure I will keep seeing them on every blank wall forever.

Broken wings full of holes where missing feathers were supposed to be, kept together only by spite and sheer will power.

The useless, crooked wings of a flightless angel. An angel that fell to fight with me, for me, for my world and my people and… and a lot of other crap that doesn’t mean shit now that he’s gone.

I have blurred memories of hugging him (his body?) after he closed his eyes, when his wings started burning. Maybe that’s where the burns on my chest came from.

I still don’t think washing machines are supposed to smell like blood.

I think they had to pry me away from him. I didn’t want to let go… I still don’t want to let go.

He can’t be gone. He can’t be… dead. Not my Cas. Not after all this shit.

He simply can’t.

_And yet here you are, Winchester, get a hold of yourself, get your ass up, what are you gonna solve by sitting here and crying like a child, uh?_

_He’s not coming back_.

I know. I know he’s not. I swear I do.

I let my legs stretch in front of me. The left one hurts if I keep it straight on the floor so I keep it bent a little. There’s a blood rimmed cut in my jeans, but I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about anything at all

I’m just so fucking tired of always losing. I lose even when I win, and that’s just not… fair. I gave everything I had, and that left me with nothing at all.

I’m so, so tired. I let my eyelids drop, second by second, and there he is, looking spooked and confused, his hand raised, clutching for dear life to an FBI badge he’s holding upside down.

I want to scream. Scream until I can’t feel my lungs anymore.

I want to punch a wall until my knuckles start bleeding and the pain is so sharp I cannot think of anything else ever again.

I want to just not exist because I know you go places after you die and I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want everything to stop spinning and stop screaming and just… stop. Please.

Please just stop hurting so much.

I want to cry. Cry until I fall asleep to wake up tomorrow feeling as empty as the universe.

But I don’t do anything. I just open my eyes, and force myself to look towards the door.

Sammy is there again, standing in the half shadows against the door side, and he looks terrible.

Sad and grieving and tired and worried and _older_ of all things. My little brother. He has a look in his eyes that reminds me a bit of what I see every day in the mirror, and my heart breaks a little more.

He’s worried for me, I know that. And this is usually the part where I say I am fine, get mad and push everyone away. Possibly start lying too, because why not. But this time… fuck that.

What I usually do is trying to mend my holes by myself, treating myself to generous doses of alcohol along the way.

But not this time. The tear is too big. I don’t know how to patch this one up. I’m beyond mending.

I lost Cas.

And I want to get up. I swear to pie I want to get up and go hug my brother and listen to him telling me I’m gonna be okay and believe it. I really do want to.

But I can’t get up. I don’t want to, and looking at my brother, my little brother, is getting harder and harder because I’m so fucking sorry, but I can’t.

I blink, and he (Cas) Is sitting in front of me at a diner table, an untouched cup of coffee held carefully by his white, strong hands. He’s chuckling, softly, at something I have said.

And now it’s never gonna happen again, because he’s gone.

And where did he go? Can I go too?

Sam’s still looking at me. I can feel his gaze chilling me.

At this point, he probably expects me to react. Do something. Because I’m his big brother, and I always get back on my feet.

And I really want to do something. _I do, I do, I do._

But I don’t do anything.

I take a deep breath, and everything hurts.

I’m sorry Sammy. I’m so, so sorry. This is not what it was supposed to be like. We won. We should be celebrating.

This is not what I am supposed to be like. I’m sorry I can’t be the bigger brother you deserve.

I wish I could get up and live on, or even just get up to go to the kitchen and eat something.

Bur I can’t. I’m so tired, I just…

I’m sorry Sammy. So sorry.

I just can’t


End file.
